Beach Ball Hat

beach ball 2

This summer my son, going into first grade, had one summer reading book, Stephanie’s Ponytail. The book was about a girl who wore a different hair style to school every day, she got mocked with a chant of “Ugly, ugly, very ugly.” and then the next day everybody would be wearing that hair style. It kind of reminded me of non-geek Ronald getting the cool kids to do The African Anteater Ritual dance in Can’t Buy Me Love.

Spoiler alert: (for Stephanie’s Ponytail, not Can’t Buy Me Love) She gets them all in the end by telling them she is going to shave her head for the next day. They all shave their heads and she does not.

The book was about individuality (though we talked more about the meanness of the chant.)

So for today they we’re assigned to wear a silly hairdo, if they felt comfortable doing so.

We talked about spikes, a faux hawk, tiny ponytails, but he wanted none of those.

All of the sudden he looked at me and said, with a huge amount of excitement and certainty, “I want to cut up that beach ball and wear it as a hat.”

I loved it. It is was the book, and my son personified. I don’t think I would have ever been able to make that choice in first grade and he had absolutely no qualms about it.

When I shared my blog publicly I did it cause I refused to teach my son to be embarrassed (He doesn’t know of my struggles because frankly it’s not necessary yet,) but I know one day he will and I wanted him to know I wasn’t ashamed.

But after today I feel like I won’t be teaching him lessons as much as he will be teaching me them.

So, I am grateful to my son for giving me a new improv (and life) goal: To have the fearlessness of a kid wearing a beach ball for a hat

 

Hanging the fuck on

In order to love and be loved, I must choose to live.

I found these words I had written on a crayon drawing I made in a random art therapy session at mood disorder camp.

Out of context it seemed like a cheesy inspirational saying, to really experience and feel love you must “live out loud.” “be in the moment,” etc. We are told by motivational speakers and bad romantic comedies that we don’t want to passively live life, we want to be in the thick of it, and they are probably correct.

Yet for some of us, we are just trying to hang the fuck on, so we sit in a room of other people trying to hang the fuck on, or balance the fuck out, or feel like they can get through the day without breaking the fuck down and we write on a piece of paper anything that will help.

So I sat there staring, being told to draw a picture about what makes me happy and peaceful. Ending life came to mind, but I sensed that was not what the art therapist was looking for.

So I wrote a thought that comes natural to most people. If you’re dead you can’t love people or feel their love, and for a few hours, on that day, that was enough to keep sick me alive.

And I am healthy now, but as I looked at the piece of paper last night, I did not think “Duh, of course.” No, for a minute I remembered, with too much ease and intensity, what it felt like to need those words to stay alive and what it felt like when even those words didn’t seem like enough.

And then I thought of this weekend, being surrounded by those I love and those who love me, celebrating another year, and I felt grateful.

And that’s what life is for someone like me, feeling grateful and safe and healthy and loved, and in that same space also sensing the “ending it all” instinct and knowing it will probably always be hanging out in the background, a little too close for comfort. And so I do what I need to do, what I am healthy enough to do, I equip myself with the coping stuff I need and, every so often I look at the camera and yell “Munroe!”*

*A reference to the 80s sitcom Too Close for Comfort, if you didn’t get this, good for you for liking books and being outdoors, more than you do bad tv. If you did get it, we’re soul-mates.

 

 

 

 

 

Status Update: Fake Status Updates Below

In a humongous display of out of shapeness, I tore my calf muscle earlier this week while improvising. Getting a leg injury while be silly on stage is about as hard to do as losing weight by bowling, but I did it. Yay, for being an over-achiever.

I posted two things on Facebook about this injury, getting some always enjoyed sympathy while not feeling pathetic or like a complainer.

This injury is a minor inconvenience, at most, but I talked about it cause getting good vibes from others is good, and it seemed funny, and I like funny, and most of all, I could share it.

When I went through depression hell, feeling the worst I ever had, I couldn’t talk about it, it felt like something you don’t share. Unless we were really close, you wouldn’t have even known. This wasn’t me putting on a brave face. We don’t “not share” cause we are brave, we “not share” because we are scared.

So here are some posts I never wrote because I couldn’t ( or felt I couldn’t) share them during my year long intense struggle with depression:

- Uh-oh, seems like the depression is coming back. Feels like a recurring STD. I need a brain condom.

 - Feeling low today, like a gymnast going under a limbo stick low.

 - Trying to get meds adjusted. Just swallowed a bunch of new side effects. 

- Last check-in before my phone gets taken away – at Richmond   Psychiatric Hospital

- Could use some extra support today #hugsanddrugs #whychoose

- Starting outpatient program today. Feeling scared and anxious. It’s like the worst first day of school ever.

- Things feel way horrible. Time to try shock therapy. If your power goes out around 10am, my apologizes.

- Finally feeling better. So grateful.

 

Mental Health Parity

Just got our new insurance info. Gyno visits are totally covered. Psychiatric visits are totally not.

Here’s hoping my vagina can be treated for depression.

The crashing seems to have stopped. My mood is uneven but manageable.

I am grateful, appreciative, realize how lucky I am, framing things in the best light and so on and on and on.

Let’s get that out of the way so I do not have to couch every sentence with one of those sentiments.

A few months back I went to the OB/GYN cause I was having hot flashes and night sweats. According to the cute old man with a fun accent Dr. guy, I am either having estrogen issues because of my poly-cystic ovaries or I am beginning early onset menopause. I am thirty-fuckin-five, by the way, so yeah that’s early.

But honestly, if this was not effecting my mood, I probably would be good with it, I have no reason to delay menopause, so, sure, let’s get that out of the way.

But hormones off-kilter equals mood off-kilter so back to the psychiatrist I went. To help with the hormones I can take a birth control pill, said birth control can make one of my meds, the med that helps me the most, less effective

So it becomes wait and see. 

Will these pills even things out or swing things in the wrong direction?

Wait and see has not worked well before.

So, I find myself angry.

Angry that I might be a patient again. I am so sick of being a patient.

Angry that others might feel the need/actually need to take on some semblance of a caregiver mode. The idea of that makes me want to jump out of my skin. I am so not comfortable with needing any sort of caregiving.

I did the hard work. Over a year of it. I took it more seriously then I ever did school work, and now there is a chance that could get messed up, and that sucks.

So I get to make the choice to continue being pro-active, to hope the meds stuff balances out quickly, and to every now and then, get angry, cause, in my view, angry beats sad everyday of the week and twice on Sunday. (A Few Good Men reference!)

“In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.” -Viktor Frankl

I have an appointment to get my meds adjusted tomorrow. I am struggling but not suffering for I have meaning in a six and a half year old boy who loves and needs me and makes me smile and laugh.

I am grateful I am healthy enough to easily see this.

When it comes to the mania part of my depression, it is tiny, like a mini M&M in a bowl of Double Stuff Oreos, tiny. By the way, I think women who are pregnant with twins would look really cute in t-shirts that say double stuff. 

But back to the mania, My mania is more the needs little sleep/has lots of energy mania. In other words, the good kind. I do not know what crashing from real mania is like, I have to imagine it would be a thousand times worse than crashing from a week of regular elevated happiness. That would be me right now, feeling a regular crash. It is scary and hard to manage, but I am lucky.

People in my mood disorder camp, when they are sick, some of them cycle many times a week or even a day. High. Crash. High. Crash.

I honestly cannot imagine it.

Crashing for me comes as a quick onset of lowness, sadness, scary thoughts. Thoughts that are the worst kind of familiar.

Hopefully, like my son’s enjoyment of Dora the Explorer, it will be short lived.

awesome. Awesome. AWesome. AWEsome. AWESome. AWESOme. AWESOMe. AWESOME.

crash.

crashing hard.

Mood tanking.

But the awesome happened. So much awesome.

Depression: A Very Special Mother’s Day Episode

 

I have often said the saving grace during my hellish depression was that my son’s life was not impacted at all. While there were some days he knew I wasn’t feeling well (and a whole trip to Florida to visit MY grandparents, that my husband so wonderfully took him on while I stayed here,) for my son, it was nothing he ever knew he had to worry about. And for the majority of my prolonged illness, I was able to care for him like I always do, with equal amounts love and tv watching.

While sick, I was fortunate enough to drop my son off at school and pick him up on an almost daily basis. Sure, for a few months, I would drop him off, go to an outpatient mood disorder program, have suicidal thoughts, and then pick him up, but he didn’t know that. Honestly, I could have showed up in a leg cast and one of those dog cones and as long as I had a treat for him in the car, he would have been completely un-phased.

Lots of things were unmanageable when I was sick. I stopped working, I stopped talking on the phone as much, I stopped watching So You Think You Can Dance, but I was able to take care of my son, this most important boy in my life.

The fact that I still could be such an active (well involved, I  not really an active anything) part of my son’s life was not due to some “pick yourself up by the bootstraps” mentality I had. It wasn’t that I was strong and mothers who can’t take care of their kids during depression are weak. It was that I was lucky, and these other moms, are not. I had my moments when I needed others to take over and if these moments became a way of life, I would have been a guilt-filled, suicidal mess.  

I often said taking care of my son was my saving grace, because it literally was. If I couldn’t have done that, I don’t know that I would have made it.

So thank you to everyone who mothered my son and me when we needed it – my husband, parents, family, friends, and for his many, many hours of service, Sponge Bob Squarepants.

 Had some fun with google story builder.

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